Water, Water, Somewhere ....

Planet DNA

This week, the assault on the Red Planet began with the launch of the Mars Global Surveyor.

Within the next decade, some 11 missions will head toward the fourth rock from the sun.

All the missions will be unmanned, but I read that NASA is considering human exploration of Mars early in the next century.

Think about it. If manned missions to Mars begin in the next 12 years or so, that means you or one of your classmates could very well be the first woman or man on Mars.

Let's just hope it isn't that kid in the Oasis T-shirt who smells like food and stuff who sits in back of the class drawing pictures of dragons in his textbook. That doofus would probably send the spaceship hurtling into the sun because he wanted to get a tan.

I've read just about everything that NASA has released on the Mars missions and concluded that I wouldn't make a very good scientist or astronaut, either.

If I were going to Mars, I'd land my ship right smack on the nose of that Face Thing we've all seen pictures of, and then I'd get out, and cruise around looking for Martians.

NASA doesn't plan to do either of those things.

According to a NASA press release, the unifying theme of the Mars exploration program is the search for water ...

OK... So, the Big Question isnt Is Anybody Out There? it's Where Can We Get A Drink In This Dump?

I don't understand what the big hairy deal is about finding water. By the time we get around to sending humans to Mars, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis will have already built a Planet Hollywood there. Not only will there be water out the wazoo, but there will also be plenty of T-shirts, Jell-O shots and overpriced cheeseburgers to boot.

If anyone from NASA is reading this, lemme give you Braniacs a piece of advice: Ix-nay on the otter-way.

No one cares about where the water is, or where it went. What Americans want is Real Life Heroes and Long-Dead Martians.

We want to turn on our TVs and see men and women of steel, walking on the surface of another planet, with only the thin skin of their spacesuits between them and certain death. A bunch of robots acting like high-tech divining rods isn't heroic it's porno for techno-geeks.

We want to know for sure whether The Face is really an artifact of an ancient Martian civilization or just a natural formation. Ditto for the pyramids and other quirky stuff photographed in the Cydonia region of Mars.

I believe you when you say the search for water is a valid, scientific enterprise. So were the roughly fourscore space shuttle missions.